At last: Shickshinny Knights of Malta linked to the Draper/Vonsiatsky Condon ManCand crowds

[Jan Klimkowski]

There is some fascinating and provocative material in these Manchurian Candidate threads, and I'm delighted to have the opportunity of discussing it with some fine researchers.

In the interests of deep political truth.

I hope we can continue to keep discussions clean(ish) and civil(ish). :bike:

I have deliberately not addressed some of the core foundations of John's intriguing hypothesis yet, as I decided to allow myself some time for reflection first.

Following are some random initial observations.

John's hypothesis has much to commend it. Many of the actors are already in the frame (to a greater or lesser extent), but are linked together in a fresh and compelling fashion. They have motive. In addition, they may have enough influence to execute the cover-up.

This last point to me is crucial - any plotters have to have sufficient intelligence-political influence to orchestrate the establishment cover-up that followed the JFK hit. (This is why it is possible to argue that "The Mob" may have provided hired guns for the JFK assassination but it would be naive to suggest that they were the ultimate perpetrators and initiators, as they could not have faciliated the high-level intelligence-government cover-up post-assassination.)

One immediate challenge to the hypothesis, acknowledged by John, is that Richard Condon wrote The Manchurian Candidate some 4-5 years before JFK was assassinated. There have been claims that John Lennon's assassin, Mark David Chapman, was a programmed killer triggered by Catcher In The Rye, but that is not the claim here. If I understand correctly, the claim is that Condon's novel lays out the nature of the plot and the identity of the plotters a full four years before the assassination itself.

Another challenge is the claim that mind control experimentation was conducted in Harbin, Manchuria. It may have been, but the known history of Unit 731 is entirely concerned with biological and chemical warfare experiments, of which very many were terminal.

Officially, Unit 731 began in 1932 when General Shiro Ishii was given command of Japan's Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory. Ishii's unit built a human experimentation compound known as the Zhongma Fortress, around 100 kilometres south of Harbin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhongma_Fortress

After some sort of disaster - perhaps an escape, perhaps the exposure of the ghastly work being undertaken there - Zhongma was closed down, and Ishii's team moved to a larger facility at Pingfang, 24 kilometres south of Harbin. Pingfang had an airport, railway and dungeons, and the Japanese attempted to incinerate the entire site when it was clear that WW2 was lost. This failed to obliterate human remains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingfang

Below is the standard account of Unit 731's range of experimentation - fundamentally consisting of biological and chemical experimentation on human subjects and delivery systems.

A special project code-named Maruta used human beings for experiments. Test subjects were gathered from the surrounding population and were sometimes referred to euphemistically as "logs" (丸太, maruta?).[11] This term originated as a joke on the part of the staff due to the fact that the official cover story for the facility given to the local authorities was that it was a lumber mill.[12]

The test subjects were selected to give a wide cross section of the population, and included common criminals, captured bandits and anti-Japanese partisans, political prisoners, and also people rounded up by the secret police for alleged "suspicious activities". They included infants, the elderly, and pregnant women.
[edit] Vivisection

* Prisoners of war were subjected to vivisection without anesthesia.[13][11]
* Vivisections were performed on prisoners after infecting them with various diseases. Scientists performed invasive surgery on prisoners, removing organs to study the effects of disease on the human body. These were conducted while the patients were alive because it was feared that the decomposition process would affect the results.[14][11] The infected and vivisected prisoners included men, women, children, and infants.[15]
* Vivisections were also performed on pregnant women, sometimes impregnated by doctors, and the fetus removed.[16]
* Prisoners had limbs amputated in order to study blood loss.[11]
* Those limbs that were removed were sometimes re-attached to the opposite sides of the body.[11]
* Some prisoners' limbs were frozen and amputated, while others had limbs frozen then thawed to study the effects of the resultant untreated gangrene and rotting.
* Some prisoners had their stomachs surgically removed and the esophagus reattached to the intestines.[11]
* Parts of the brain, lungs, liver, etc. were removed from some prisoners.[17][13][11]

In 2007, Doctor Ken Yuasa testified to the Japan Times that, "I was afraid during my first vivisection, but the second time around, it was much easier. By the third time, I was willing to do it." He believes at least 1,000 persons, including surgeons, were involved in vivisections over mainland China.[18]
[edit] Weapons testing

* Human targets were used to test grenades positioned at various distances and in different positions.[11]
* Flame throwers were tested on humans.[11]
* Humans were tied to stakes and used as targets to test germ-releasing bombs, chemical weapons and explosive bombs.[11]

[edit] Germ warfare attacks

* Prisoners were injected with inoculations of disease, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects.[11]
* To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea, then studied[11].
* Prisoners were infested with fleas in order to acquire large quantities of disease-carrying fleas for the purposes of studying the viability of germ warfare[citation needed].
* Plague fleas, infected clothing, and infected supplies encased in bombs were dropped on various targets. The resulting cholera, anthrax, and plague were estimated to have killed around 400,000 Chinese civilians.[11]
* Tularemia was tested on Chinese civilians.[19]
* Unit 731 and its affiliated units (Unit 1644, Unit 100, et cetera) were actively involved not only in research and development, but also in experimental deployment of epidemic-creating biowarfare weapons in assaults against the Chinese populace (both civilian and military) throughout World War II. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the laboratories of Unit 731 and Unit 1644, were spread by low-flying airplanes upon Chinese cities, coastal Ningbo in 1940, and Changde, Hunan Province, in 1941. This military aerial spraying killed thousands of people with bubonic plague epidemics.[20]

[edit] Other experiments

Prisoners were subjected to other experiments such as:

* being hung upside down to see how long it would take for them to choke to death.[11]
* having air injected into their arteries to determine the time until the onset of embolism.[11]
* having horse urine injected into their kidneys.[11]
* being deprived of food and water to determine the length of time until death.
* being placed into high-pressure chambers until death.
* being exposed to extreme temperatures and developing frostbite to determine how long humans could survive with such an affliction, and to determine the effects of rotting and gangrene on human flesh.[11]
* having experiments performed upon prisoners to determine the relationship between temperature, burns, and human survival.
* being placed into centrifuges and spun until dead.
* having animal blood injected and the effects studied.
* being exposed to lethal doses of x-ray radiation.
* having various chemical weapons tested on prisoners inside gas chambers.
* being injected with sea water to determine if it could be a substitute for saline.
* being buried alive. (Victims included infants.)

[edit] Biological warfare

Japanese scientists performed tests on prisoners with plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism and other diseases.[21] This research led to the development of the defoliation bacilli bomb and the flea bomb used to spread the bubonic plague.[22] Some of these bombs were designed with ceramic (porcelain) shells, an idea proposed by Ishii in 1938.

These bombs enabled Japanese soldiers to launch biological attacks, infecting agriculture, reservoirs, wells, and other areas with anthrax, plague-carrier fleas, typhoid, dysentery, cholera, and other deadly pathogens. During biological bomb experiments, scientists dressed in protective suits would examine the dying victims. Infected food supplies and clothing were dropped by airplane into areas of China not occupied by Japanese forces. In addition, poisoned food and candies were given out to unsuspecting victims and children, and the results examined.
[edit] Unit members

This does not mean that Unit 731 was not conducting mind control or psychological experimentation, although it is not part of the known historical record. It is entirely plausible that a "scientific/medical" unit prepared to undertake such chilling research on humans in the service of Emperor and nation would have also been prepared to attempt to learn how to control and programme the human mind.

It is also plausible that any success in this area would have been top secret, and that the post-WW2 inheritors of this terrible research would have doctored the historical record to suppress any public knowledge of such work. If this is what happened, those inheritors get an A+ for their acts of suppression.

My own judgement of American and British "MK-ULTRA" style research is that its attempts to harness, control and programme dissociative states are derived primarily from medical observation of the effects of extreme trauma on the human psyche (shellshock), early schizophrenia research, and occult knowledge of "splitting" from traditions represented by the likes of the Golden Dawn, Scottish Rite Freemasonry and the OTO.

Two of these factors - shellshock and schizophrenia - are universal, and Japanese military/spook doctors may well have made the same observations as some of their western equivalents. As for the third factor, secrets of the psyche preserved and taught in an occult tradition, Japan has its own secret societies, and many are influenced by Buddhist conceptions of the powers of the subconscious mind.

Plus there's the long-standing interest of the SS-Ahnenerbe in Tibetan Buddhism...

So, as a provisional conclusion, I would not be surprized to learn that Unit 731 was conducting its own version of MK-ULTRA, but such a project is not part of the official historical record. I would be very interested in any evidence or suggestion that psychological experimentation did take place in Harbin.

Note also that of the two sub-units based specifically in Manchuria, Unit 200 is described as being involved in plague research, but Unit 571 is more shadowy.

Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory

The founder of Unit 731 was General Ishii Shiro, who was born in the village of Chiyoda on June 25th, 1892. While considered a selfish and pushy individual, he nonetheless excelled at the Kyoto Imperial University in the field of medicine. He also courted and married the daughter of the school president. In 1920, Ishii graduated from the school and enlisted in the Japanese army, where he was soon commissioned as an officer.

Ishii found himself assigned to the 1st Army Hospital and the Army Medical School in Tokyo in 1922. There his work impressed his superiors enough to gain him post-graduate medical schooling back at the Kyoto Imperial University two years later.

Ishii took a two-year tour of the West starting in 1928. In his travels, Ishii did extensive research on the effects of biological and chemical warfare developments from World War One and on. It was a highly successful mission and helped win him his patron, Minister of the Army Araki Sadao.

Ishii was placed in command of the Army Epidemic Prevention Research Laboratory located in Tokyo in 1932. The laboratory focused on both the prevention and conduct of chemical and biological warfare. There research quickly outgrew their facilities and a year later the lab received an additional building and land grant in Tokyo. Ishii also organized a satellite laboratory in Harbin a few months after its capture. Harbin was a major railroad hub for the whole region, a fact that Ishii would put to great use. Mirroring on a smaller scale the Nazi extermination machine in Europe, the rail system became the transports of death for thousands destined for Ishii's units. The laboratory proved to be too public, though, so Ishii continued legitimate medical studies there and prepared for a more secret location for his bio-war experiments. Ishii organized his secret group, the Togo Unit, to conduct these secret experiments. The Togo Unit made its headquarters in the Chinese village of Bei-inho (or Beiyinhe), 100 Km south of Harbin. The local inhabitants were forcibly evacuated and their village burnt down. Immediately a 100-room living quarters building and several smaller labs were constructed while work began on the true facility.

Within a year the facility that would be called the Zhongma Fortress was complete. Three-meter high walls topped with electrified barbed wire and a moat with drawbridge surrounded the buildings within. The complex contained a huge laboratory with hundreds of rooms and smaller surrounding labs, office buildings, living and dining facilities, warehouses and munitions storage, crematoria, and the infamous prisons. The road outside was closed to all traffic not related to the facility and when trains traveled nearby, their shades all had to be drawn. Local Chinese workers who were required to enter the facility had to wear a basket over their head and be escorted by the army guards. Inside, with the full knowledge that this work was a flagrant violation of the 1925 Geneva Convention, Ishii pushed forward. The Kempei Tai were assigned to act as human procurement agents for this and all subsequent units. Prisoners were almost constantly shackled. While they were well fed, the experiments performed on them were so horrible that the average life expectancy was one month. In addition to the work being conducted with pathogens, blood draining experiments and food deprivation experiments were conducted. In spite of the precautions, rumors began to circulate outside about the work being carried out there. The end for the facility came in 1936, when an escape attempt allowed several prisoners to make it to freedom and spread the word to the outside world through the Chinese resistance forces.

In 1936, the Togo Unit was again reorganized and expanded, taking the official title of the Epidemic Prevention Department of the Kwantung Army (AKA the Ishii Unit). A smaller sub-section to be based in Xinjing was created to compliment the work of the Ishii Unit. Known as the Wakamatsu Unit, this group was established to research and combat animal diseases.

Both units were approved and established with full knowledge of the Japanese Imperial Headquarters.

1938 brought another relocation to the unit, this time to Pingfan (25 Km southeast of Harbin). After the early escape from the Zhongma Fortress, this location was considered more secure. Pingfan had been cleared of its population and designated a special military zone. Construction began immediately on a huge bio-war facility. This facility was similar to the earlier Zhongma Fortress, down to the surrounding moat. An airfield was also constructed at this location and the airspace above the facility was restricted to military flights only.

The prison inside the Pingfan complex was also greatly improved over the older one. Thick concrete walls were installed to foil escape attempts. The cells were laid out side by side and faced the corridor. Some were single occupancy and some housed multiple prisoners. Each was fitted with a special door that allowed prisoners inside to stick their arms out into the corridor to have injections or blood work. Every cell had a flush toilet and a clean, wooden floor in addition to central heating and cooling. Again, the diet was good and the facilities clean so that outside diseases and other health problems wouldn't confuse the testing results. The cells were organized into buildings called ro buildings and housed either men or women and children.

The cover story was that the facility was a large lumber mill. This led to the doctors within to start referring to their prisoners as maruta (logs), a term that would stick for all the medical units throughout the war.

Research was conducted into four main areas throughout the war and a myriad of smaller ones. The four main areas were Cholera, Epidemic Hemorrhagic Fever, Plague and Frostbite. The Cholera work eventually led to dogs being used as the vector in a test on a village west of Chinan. While considered successful and causing over a hundred deaths, Cholera bio-warfare applications were eventually scrapped due to its long incubation time but human experimentation continued in vaccine work. Epidemic Hemorrhagic Fever (EHF) was a disease local to the Chinese-Russian border. Japanese troops had become infected with it over the years of fighting in the region. This gave the researchers the idea of using it as a biological weapon and human experimentation began. The humans used in the EHF experiments were called monkeys as a cover story. Frostbite research grew out of the belief that eventually Japanese and Soviet forces would be drawn into war in Manchuria and Siberia, probably during a period of extreme cold to aid the Soviet forces. Human freezing experiments were conducted to study tolerances and treatments of frostbite cases.

Plague was the area of greatest interest to the doctors. Six different plague attacks were conducted in China during the war. The first occurred on the Kaimingjie are of the port of Ningbo in a joint Unit 731 and Unit 1644 endeavor. Using airdropped wheat, corn, scraps of cloth and cotton that had been infected with plague, a huge outbreak was started that resulted in over a hundred deaths. The area had to be evacuated and contained with a quarantine that kept the area off limits until the 1960s. A later attack in 1942 on the area by the two units led to the development of their final delivery system: airdropped ceramic bombs. Some work was conducted during the war with the use of liquid forms of the pathogen but the results were unsatisfactory for the researchers.

Many other research projects were undertaken during the war. There were many vivisection operations performed, most without even anesthesia. There were experiments with venereal diseases, smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid and dysentery. The units carried out VD exams on the "comfort women" of the Japanese brothels. There were air embolism injections given to prisoners to study the effects. The units also developed and used the defoliant Dioxin, which would later become the primary defoliant of the US military in Vietnam. Poison gas tests with mustard gas, lewisite, cyanic acid gas, and phosgene gas were also conducted. Towards the end of the war, stimulant tests were done for drugs for kamikaze pilots, reducing fear and inciting frenzy in its subjects.

In 1938-39 Ishii deployed bio-war units to the Russian border to assist in the escalating skirmishes there. Most of the operations were unsuccessful tactically but provided useful research and publicity for the group.

On August 1st, 1940, the Ishii Unit was again renamed to the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army, more commonly known as Manchukuo Unit 731 (or simply Unit 731, though that wouldn't come into common usage until 1941). Unit 731 was divided into four sections: Research, Experiments, Anti-Epidemic, and Water Purification and Production. Immediately, there was an influx of doctors and medical students from Japan who went to the unit to study. Ishii had been gathering the scientific elite of Japan around him as his unit grew and now he had a very firm base to use them from. The professors of Japan were especially helpful to Ishii, finding recruits and assisting with all manner of aid and assistance to the group. By the time war came with America and the Allied Powers, Unit 731 numbered 3000 directly within the unit and when sister units and satellite facilities were counted in, Ishii had some 20,000 people working on his projects. Each of the units was officially classified as a battalion but received funding equal to at least a regiment. Each unit consisted of a mix of military and civilian doctors, medical specialists and technicians, interpreters and a variety of civilian employees.

The efforts of the medical units were supported by a number of other military and civilian elements. Almost the entire university system of Japan was at their disposal, running exchange programs between the schools and the field units. The Youth Corps regularly sent interns and laborers to work in the research centers. A symbiosis between the Kempei Tai and the medical units developed, with the Kempei Tai acting as a human procurement arm and security force but also acting as overseers to the project, ensuring secrecy and loyalty. The Kwantung Army, too, was involved in both aiding and benefiting from the research conducted in its own backyard.

The members of the medical units also received rewards. The first and foremost was the power and prestige that accompanied those working with the units. There were also better food rations and luxury items allotted to the researchers and their staff. Finally, there were the brothels and their comfort women. The brothels were classified as Class 1 (Officers), Class 2 (NCOs) and Class 3 (Civilians and Enlisted Men). These were staffed by captive women, especially Koreans and captured Western and Russian women.

The final official tally of casualties by the units in their experimentation is 3000, though many put the figures much higher. The casualties from the field testing of their diseases runs much higher with no official statistic established.

Sister Units/Facilities:

NOTE: Each unit would actually carry a "T" marking at the end of their name/title to designate them as a secret unit. For example, the official title of Unit 731 would read: Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army, Unit 731 T.

Anda: This was an open air testing area about 120 Km from the Pingfang facility. Tests were conducted on humans to see the effectiveness of pathogens and their delivery systems in a "real world" environment.

Xingjing (Changchun): Headquarters of the Wakamatsu Unit (Unit 100 under veterinarian Wakamatsu Yujiro). This facility dedicated itself to both the study of animal vaccines, to protect Japanese resources, and especially veterinary bio-warfare. Diseases tests for use against Soviet and Chinese horses and livestock were developed here. In addition to these tests, Unit 100 ran a bacteria factory to produce the pathogens needed by other units. Sabotage testing also was handled at this facility, everything from poisons and other toxins to chemical crop destruction.

Beijing- Headquarters of Unit 1855. There was also a branch experimentation unit based at Chinan. Plague and other diseases were extensively studied at this facility.

Nanjing- Headquarters of the Tama Unit (Unit Ei-1644). This unit conducted extensive joint projects and operations with Unit 731.

Guangdong (Guangzhou)- The headquarters of the Nami Unit (Unit 8604). This facility conducted food and water deprivation experiments as well as water-borne typhus human experimentation. In addition, this facility served as the main rat-farm for the medical units to provide them with plague vectors for their experiments.

Singapore- Headquarters of the Oka Unit (Unit 9420). Formed in 1942 by Naito Ryoichi, Unit 9420 had approximately 1000 personnel based out of the Raffles Medical University. The unit was commanded by Major General Kitagawa Masataka and supported the Japanese Southern Army. There were two main sub-units, the Kono Unit which specialized in malaria and the Umeoka Unit which dealt with plague. In addition to disease experimentation, this facility served as one of the main rat catching and processing centers. Evidence points towards this facility also supplying a medical sub-unit operating in neutral Thailand with diseases for unknown operations and/or experiments.

Hiroshima- At a top-secret factory at Okunoshima, chemical weapon production for the Japanese military and medical units was conducted. Starting with mustard gas production in 1928, the factory moved on to such poisons as yperite, lewisite and cyanogen. During the 1930s, as the war in China grew worse, the island the factory sat on was removed from most maps to strengthen secrecy and security.

Unit 200 (Manchuria- exact headquarters unknown): This unit was associated directly with Unit 731 and worked mainly in plague research.

Unit 571 (Manchuria- exact headquarters unknown): Another unit that worked directly and extensively with Unit 731.

Special Teams: Special units led by Ishii Shiro's older brother and only staffed with members from Ishii's hometown. They operated separately from the regular medical organizations as roving researchers and troubleshooters.

Operations and experiments continued up until the end of the war. With the Russian invasion of Manchuria and China in August of 1945, the units had to hastily abandon their work. All of the members of the units and their families fled across Manchuria and China to return to Japan. Behind them they left skeleton crews to hide the evidence of their atrocities. All the facilities were to be demolished with explosives but most were so well constructed that they survived somewhat intact as testimony to what happened there. Ishii commanded that every member of the group take the secret of their experiments to the grave with them, threatening to find them if they did and ordering none of them to go into public work back in Japan. All of the infected rats and the human prisoners were killed and their bodies quickly destroyed. Potassium Cyanide vials were issued to everyone in the event of capture. Ishii planned to see the medical secrets hidden away from any public discovery.

http://www.fortunecity.com/tattooine/leiber/50/bds1.htm

More later.

[Jan Klimkowski]

If Oswald was an MK-ULTRA subject, which I consider a fruitful line of investigation, much of his programming would probably have taken place at Atsugi, which is a known and recorded MK-ULTRA test site.

See also here:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/....php?t=305

However, speculatively, there are aspects of the Oswald intelligence legend which in my judgement lend support to John Armstrong's "Harvey and Lee" Two Oswalds hypothesis.

The Two Oswalds hypothesis is not necessarily inconsistent with either the Atsugi or Harbin hypothesis.

Eg here:

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...ght=oswald

[Helen Reyes]

btw, if Mohrenschildt was a noble German Baltic family from Reval/Tallinn, they probably descended from Teutonic Knights, who wore the Black Cross.

[Jan Klimkowski]

The one hint of Unit 731 psychological testing is:

Towards the end of the war, stimulant tests were done for drugs for kamikaze pilots, reducing fear and inciting frenzy in its subjects.

John has already speculated on the nature of the training of kamikaze pilots.

This is certainly worth further investigation, particularly with regard to the nature of how the psyche was "prepared" for a terminal mission.

[Jan Klimkowski]

House mom/homemaker. I've done some shoddy journalism in the past. I've been variously called a demon from hell, Anti-Christ, KGB agent, Mossad agent, neo-Nazi, sadist and fascist, but if I had to choose I'd just call myself seeker after truth. Thanks for asking.

:dancing:

Truth seeker is of course the correct answer.

Of the many insults hurled my way, my favourite was when a BBC executive said, to my face: "who do you think you are? Fucking Special Agent Fox Mulder?"

[Helen Reyes]

Thanks for posting this Helen, it's fascinating material.

On the Bircher front, it is a fact that the man (an American named Bob Curtis) who was hired by Ferdinand Marcos to modify the metallurgical fingerprint of all the gold he was recovering (for laundering purposes) from those numerous stashes made there by the Japanese Golden Lilly plunder teams during the war was initially funded in his efforts by the John Birch Society. I mention this only to demonstrate the depth of the continuing connections (as I certainly don't want to divert this thread from its central thrust).

The Japanese anti-Semitism thesis might be a little off-topic, I thought, but could help point toward more historical sources on Harbin. The footnotes didn't seem to have anything really valueable in English, so I didn't end up citing them.

[Helen Reyes]

My own judgement of American and British "MK-ULTRA" style research is that its attempts to harness, control and programme dissociative states are derived primarily from medical observation of the effects of extreme trauma on the human psyche (shellshock), early schizophrenia research, and occult knowledge of "splitting" from traditions represented by the likes of the Golden Dawn, Scottish Rite Freemasonry and the OTO.

Two of these factors - shellshock and schizophrenia - are universal, and Japanese military/spook doctors may well have made the same observations as some of their western equivalents. As for the third factor, secrets of the psyche preserved and taught in an occult tradition, Japan has its own secret societies, and many are influenced by Buddhist conceptions of the powers of the subconscious mind.

I agree with Jan here, except that shell shock was or is universal. First, there had to be shelling, which is recent. The first cases are supposed to have been from the Russo-Japanese War, followed by WWI, but from my own conversations with veterans, my firm impression is that "shell shock" only became a household word in America during the Korean War, when a very large number of soldiers simply couldn't fight.

What is universal is dissociation during extreme torture. I can't comment on OTO, mesmerism or Buddhist techniques except to say that the idea of "Chinese water torture" was very much part of the American milieu before and after Manchurian Candidate and most likely is one of those things intimately related to the experience of captivity by American soldiers in the Korean conflict.

[Jan Klimkowski]

My own judgement of American and British "MK-ULTRA" style research is that its attempts to harness, control and programme dissociative states are derived primarily from medical observation of the effects of extreme trauma on the human psyche (shellshock), early schizophrenia research, and occult knowledge of "splitting" from traditions represented by the likes of the Golden Dawn, Scottish Rite Freemasonry and the OTO.

Two of these factors - shellshock and schizophrenia - are universal, and Japanese military/spook doctors may well have made the same observations as some of their western equivalents. As for the third factor, secrets of the psyche preserved and taught in an occult tradition, Japan has its own secret societies, and many are influenced by Buddhist conceptions of the powers of the subconscious mind.

I agree with Jan here, except that shell shock was or is universal. First, there had to be shelling, which is recent. The first cases are supposed to have been from the Russo-Japanese War, followed by WWI, but from my own conversations with veterans, my firm impression is that "shell shock" only became a household word in America during the Korean War, when a very large number of soldiers simply couldn't fight.

What is universal is dissociation during extreme torture. I can't comment on OTO, mesmerism or Buddhist techniques except to say that the idea of "Chinese water torture" was very much part of the American milieu before and after Manchurian Candidate and most likely is one of those things intimately related to the experience of captivity by American soldiers in the Korean conflict.

"Shell shock" is what we now call "combat stress reaction" or "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" in a battlefield context. It was probably called "Da Costa's Syndrome" or "soldier's heart" during the American Civil War. And, of relevance to this thread, it was certainly identified during the Russo-Japanese War.

According to my understanding, the psychological trauma leading to phenomena such as "splitting" does not require shells. It does require the extreme emotional responses produced by combat. So, for clarity, what I'm actually claiming is a universal factor which provided potential insights for "MK-ULTRA"-type doctors is combat stress/trauma reaction, and its implications for the manipulating the human mind.

In addition, the visible head of Britain's "MK-ULTRA" programme, Dr William Sargant, obtained many of his insights into how to manipulate the psyche from his treatment of soldiers with what was then called "shell shock".

Eg:

William Walters Sargant (24 April 1907 - 27 August 1988), was a British psychiatrist who is now famous for his work with shell-shocked servicemen during World War Two, and later for his book entitled Battle for the Mind in which he discusses the nature of the process by which our minds are subject to influence by others. Sargant was also heavily involved to the end of his career with the Intelligence Services, including the CIA Project MKULTRA.

Trained at the Maudsley Hospital, South London. Sargant established a unit at Belmont Hospital during World War Two for the treatment of shell-shocked servicemen. There, along with Eliot Slater, he was a pioneer and advocate of physical methods of treatment in psychiatry such as ECT, continuous narcosis, insulin coma therapy and psychosurgery. His enthusiasm for such methods grew partly out of contempt for psychoanalysis,which was hugely popular among British psychiatrists between the wars.[citation needed] As an exponent of biological psychiatry, he regarded psychoanalysis as worse than useless in treating severe mental illness.

Founder and Director of the Department of Psychological Medicine at St Thomas' Hospital in London, where he promoted physical treatments in psychiatry, and had his in-patients referred by consultants from all over the UK at the adjacent Royal Waterloo Hospital. He was also a consultant to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI5/MI6). In 1953 he associated with Frank Olson, Deputy Acting Head of Special Operations for the CIA, investigating the use of mind-bending drugs at the Biological Warfare Centre at Porton Down.[1]

In 1944 he collaborated with Slater in writing An Introduction to Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry, a textbook on biological psychiatry that included lobotomy and shock therapy and remained in print for three decades.

In 1957 William Sargant published one of the first books on the psychology of brainwashing, Battle for the Mind. While this book is often referred to as a work on 'brainwashing', and indeed it is subtitled a Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing, Sargant emphasises that his aim is to elucidate the processes involved rather than advocate uses. In the book he refers particularly to religious phenomena and in particular Christian methodism, emphasising the apparent need for those who would change people's minds to first excite them, as did the founder of Methodism, John Wesley.

Sargant connected Pavlov’s findings to the ways people learned and internalized belief systems. Conditioned behavior patterns could be changed by stimulated stresses beyond a dog’s capacity for response, in essence causing a breakdown. This could also be caused by intense signals, longer than normal waiting periods, rotating positive and negative signals and changing a dog’s physical condition, as through illness. Depending on the dog’s initial personality, this could possibly cause a new belief system to be held tenaciously. Sargant also connected Pavlov’s findings to the mechanisms of brain-washing in religion and politics.[2]

William Sargant was a pioneer in methods of placing false memories into patients. He attested at the 1977 U.S. Senate hearing, "that the therapist should deliberately distort the facts of the patient's life-experience to achieve heightened emotional response and abreaction. In the drunken state of narcoanalysis patients are prone to accept the therapist's false constructions."

Sargant and Dr Ewen Cameron of Project MKULTRA notoriety, were friends and colleagues who shared and exchanged views and information on brainwashing and de-patterning techniques and their mutual researches in this area. Both men had extensive CIA and British Secret Intelligence Service connections.[3]

The aim of Cameron, Sargant and the CIA’s researches was to find a way to obliterate the memories of an allied spy ('de-patterning') and implant false memories at a deep level so that if that spy was captured in his adoptive country, he would be incapable under duress or even torture of revealing his true American/British allegiance. He would only be able to reveal the falsely implanted memories that supported his assumed persona. This concept became termed 'The Manchurian Candidate' after the novel. The extensive use of 'heroic' doses of ECT combined with Deep Sleep Treatment (narcosis), anti-depressants, tape-loops, insulin coma therapy, and other drugs in this context, was designed to induce catastrophic memory loss which would then supposedly be replaced with false memories and ideas (via tape loops, hypnosis, LSD or conversations while the person was drugged).

The CIA eventually became disillusioned with the research, saying it produced only 'amnesiacs and vegetables', but not until Cameron and Sargant between them had destroyed the health, memories and lives of countless patients.[4]

The author and psychiatrist Harvey Weinstein has established a direct link between Sargant's research on brainwashing and political conversion, and the research aspect of Cameron's work for MKULTRA. Cameron wrote in a paper on 'The Transition Neurosis': 'Sargant has described what little we know of the dynamics of these political and religious conversions and has attempted to duplicate them but from what we gather, with somewhat limited success. He used depleting emetics. We have explored this procedure in one case, using sleeplessness, disinhibiting agents, and hypnosis.'[5] Cameron often sought Sargant's advice and on one occasion Sargant sent Cameron a note saying 'Whatever you manage in this field, I thought of it first.' [6]

In addition to LSD, Cameron also experimented with various paralytic drugs, as well as electroconvulsive therapy at 30 to 40 times the normal power. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced coma for months on end (up to three in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and post-partum depression, many of whom suffered permanently from his actions.
[edit] Sargant's Covert Research at St. Thomas'

In St. Thomas' Hospital Sargant had a a 'Sleep Room' modelled on the one Cameron had created at the Allan Memorial Institute for the MKULTRA programme. Here he treated many British citizens – mainly women - over the years, experimenting usually without their consent (see below) using ECT combined with Deep Sleep Treatment (narcosis), drugs, insulin coma therapy and tape loops – the same techniques as Cameron employed in Canada.[7]

Scores of English patients were involved in illegal, unethical and dangerous experiments for which they almost certainly never gave their consent. Sargant was one of the dominant figures in psychiatry in his day, the 1970s. No one would dare to challenge him. Patients were'incarcerated in the 'Sleep Room' and subjected to horrendous experimental treatments for which no consent forms were signed. Patients were kept in a drug-induced sleep. This was part of what Sargant called 'depatterning'. They were only briefly awoken to receive electroshocks. Sargant would wheel into the 'Sleep Room' a portable electroshock machine. The normal procedure would have been to deliver a single 110 volt shock. Sargant used shocks 20 to 40 times more intense, two or three times daily, with the power turned up to 150 volts. Some patients received multiple electro shocks over a period of 65 days. Patients were put to sleep for long periods and received all kinds of drugs. They were in no condition to question him.

In direct parallel with Cameron's techniques, Sargant used tape loops played through a recorder placed under the patient’s pillow to implant false memories or ideas. Leonard Rubenstein, a technician who had created the tape loops for Cameron was flown to England to advise Sargant on how the tape loops were made.[7]

Possibly going even further than Cameron, both at Belmont Hospital in Surrey and St.Thomas' in London, Sargant subjected patients to up to three months' combined ECT, deep sleep treatment, insulin coma therapy and drugs. He said in a talk delivered in Leeds: 'For several years past we have been treating severe resistant depression with long periods of sleep treatment. We can now keep patients asleep or very drowsy for up to 3 months if necessary. During sleep treatment we also give them ECT and anti-depressant drugs'.[8]

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1 ^ http://www.frankolsonproject.org/stateme...homas.html.
2 ^ a b Sargant, W. (1997). Battle for the Mind; A physiology of conversion and brain-washing (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Malor Books. p. 300. ISBN 1-883536-06-5. http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Mind-Physio...1883536065.
3 ^ Anne Collins, In the Sleep Room (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1988, ISBN 0-88619-198-X), p. 39, pp. 42-3, p. 133.
4 ^ John Marks, The Search for The Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control (New York, W.W. Norton, 1979, ISBN 0-393-30794-8); Gordon Thomas, Journey Into Madness (London: Bantam Press, 1988, ISBN 0-593-011-42-2).
5 ^ Harvey Weinstein, A Father, A Son and the CIA (Toronto, James Lorimer & Co., 1988, ISBN 1-55028-116-X), p. 138.
6 ^ Gordon Thomas, Journey Into Madness (London: Bantam Press, 1988, ISBN 0-593-011-42-2), pp. 189-190.
7 ^ a b Gordon Thomas, Mindfield pp. 273-274.
8 ^ William Sargant, Paper to the Samaritans, 11 September 1971.

[Helen Reyes]

The one hint of Unit 731 psychological testing is:

Towards the end of the war, stimulant tests were done for drugs for kamikaze pilots, reducing fear and inciting frenzy in its subjects.

John has already speculated on the nature of the training of kamikaze pilots.

This is certainly worth further investigation, particularly with regard to the nature of how the psyche was "prepared" for a terminal mission.

This is the only kind of kamikaze "training" that makes any sense to me, stimulants to be used along with the Shinto ceremony for people who were consciously laying down their lives for their country. "Late in the war" also makes sense, because the initial volunteers for suicide missions would be quickly used up and later volunteers or recruit might be less willing. Did Uncle Vanya spin a tale here, turning a modest benzadrine factory into a full-fledged central mind control nexus?

[Helen Reyes]

Of the many insults hurled my way, my favourite was when a BBC executive said, to my face: "who do you think you are? Fucking Special Agent Fox Mulder?"

You should have quoted the Chuang Tsu butterfly dream to him. You know, "Am I Chuang Tsu dreaming I am a butterfly, or am I the butterfly dreaming I am Chuang Tsu?"

You know the real origin of the term X-Files, right?